Ahhh the now-beautiful Imee Marcos

October 12, 2015 By raissa 134 Comments

Guest blog by Lorraine Marie T. Badoy

I am reprinting this with Lorraine’s permission. It is a citizen’s reaction to Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos showing off her well chiseled body on the cover of a magazine.

For a long time now, the Marcoses have been trying to crawl into public affection by getting featured in the lifestyle sections of newspapers and in fashion and leisure magazines. Their beautiful photos hold a deep dark secret that they wish the public will simply forget. This is the message of Imee Marcos’ magazine cover.

Ahhh the now-beautiful Imee Marcos.

Massive plastic surgery done exceedingly well.

I am grateful to know, for once, where our money went and that it was well-spent—unlike Bongbong’s Oxford “education”. (We all know what happened there. Nagpa aral TAYO sa Oxford, anong ginawa? Ha? Anong ginawa mo, Bongbong? DRUGS, PARTY, BULAKBOL. Pulpol.)

But Imee did her homework well.

Got one of the best plastic surgeons to chainsaw her baba and anime her eyes and god knows what else. Yes ok, it’s still a pain to know we paid for her makeover. Still, you gotta hand it to her.

The homely girl with Arsenio Lacson-like features is no more.

Plus OF COURSE, there’s photoshop, plastic surgery of the masses.

And people –even those who know the truth—have been oohing and aahing.

And me, left out in the cold again.

Because I see this for what it is.

I see how massive wealth stolen from a country bleeding and down on its knees can be used to buy not just respectability but oh-darn-god adoration from the very people this family of shameless thieves have bled dry.

I look at this and I can’t help but see, in my mind’s eye, the hordes of people who swoop down on Rustans grocery in my neighborhood when it closes at night, to scavenge for food.

And I see reed-thin half naked children knocking on my car’s window to beg for food.

Millions upon millions of Filipinos living worse than dogs—under our bridges, in hovels made of torn tarpaulin and stitched together with the flimsiest of their desperate hopes.

And I cannot help but see children of Samar covered in boils weeping with pus and blood from their heads down to their toes because there are no health services in a country mired in widespread theft by those in power—the solid Marcos legacy: systemic and systematic corruption.

And I can, once again, smell the sour pungent smell of the severely impoverished that hits you in the face and stays on your skin no matter how hard you scrub nor how many times you soap yourself.

And I see red, Imee.

I see the blood of thousands of martyrs of Martial Law–bloodied, hogtied, chopped with evidence of severe torture, rape.

And I see the bloodied body of Archimedes Trajano—the 22 year old Mapua student who had the temerity to ask Imee Marcos in an open forum “Must the Kabataang Barangay be headed by the president’s daughter?” And this so angered the plastic-surgeried one that Archimedes Trajano was picked up right there and then by Imee’s bodyguards and tortured and killed.

22 years old.

And his life was over.

22 years old.

Like my son is now.

And as curious-to-know-answers as my son is. Lucky for my son, he can now ask that question of any politician and not get killed. (And NO. I AM NOT A FAN OF NOYNOY. OH YUCK.)

I look at this and I see Archie’s parents looking down on their 22-year old son’s bloodied body in the mortuary and asking “Why him, God? Why our son?”

Before I hear any Marcos loyalist ask me for proof, eto na: In 1993, A U-S Federal Court in Honolulu awarded Agapita Trajano and ten thousand other Filipinos two billion U.S. dollars in damages for human rights violations covering torture, disappearance and murder under the Marcos regime.

Fat chance though that this will register with the willfully obtuse (obtuse is a polite term for ‘stupid’).

So yeah, I look at the heavily-photoshopped, massively-plastic-surgeried Imee and I see the truth Marcos loyalists do not want to see and what the deeply asleep cannot see:

A monster who continues to live in vulgar extravagance with wealth stolen from generations of Filipinos.

Someone who is part of that family of obscene fucks who stole our country’s bright future and has done so without a tinge of shame nor remorse.

And I see too, that OTHER obscenity—the Philippine Tatler, the Maurice Arcaches and Tim Yaps of Philippine high society (as in, “High ka ba?”) who collude with each other and cover each other’s crimes and grant each other respectability—no matter if it damns an entire country.

The feudal lords spraying Chanel no 5 on each other to cover the stench of blood on their hands and extolling each other so those who are asleep will blindly follow and oooh and ahhh.

Gising, mga kababayan ko.

Nagmamakaawa ako.

Gising na.

134 Comments on "Ahhh the now-beautiful Imee Marcos"

andrew lim

Guest blog by Lorraine Marie T. Badoy

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